Metodologies per a la coresponsabilitat en l’aprenentatge universitari

L’Espai Europeu d’Educació Superior ha propiciat un replantejament metodològic basat en el desenvolupament de competències que permet formular noves propostes d’estil docent universitari. En aquest article plantegem un model metodològic pròxim als principis del constructivisme social i del pensament complex, aplicable a un mòdul dels estudis de grau en Educació Infantil i en Educació Primària, analitzant diferents estratègies didàctiques utilitzades per a facilitar l’aprenentatge dels estudiants. Les diverses propostes metodològiques tenen, com a denominador comú,les particularitats següents: totes elles estan centrades en l’alumne, dinamitzen diferents àmbits competencials i afavoreixen la coresponsabilitat entre professor i estudiant en el procés d’aprenentatge. Els resultats d’un estudi fet durant el curs 2008-2009 sobre la percepció dels estudiants en relació a metodologies afins a les proposades,ens ha servit per a ratificar la pertinença de la majoria d’estratègies i incorporar-les al Pla docent del mòdul Societat, Família i Escola I

School administrators' perceptions of democratic coexistence in Catalan schools: An analytical study

In democratic societies, education should help build a participative, critical and responsible citizenry and therefore promote the role of schools as settings where students learn democratic coexistence. With the study reported on here we aimed to analyse how coexistence is fostered in classrooms and schools, as well as the possible synergy between schools' efforts to educate in democratic coexistence, and the children's social participation in their setting. To do so, we focused on the perspective of 476 school administrators at schools in Catalonia (Spain) based on an ad-hoc questionnaire comprised of 22 items on a Likert scale. The results reflect settings that value democratic coexistence at school and in society, although when we delved a bit deeper, we found aspects that still required more work. Actions that should be the focal point in the immediate future include developing more innovative educational strategies, training the administrators and enlisting students' participation in running the schools

Vaccination of influenza a virus decreases transmission rates in pigs

Limited information is available on the transmission and spread of influenza virus in pig populations with differing immune statuses. In this study we assessed differences in transmission patterns and quantified the spread of a triple reassortant H1N1 influenza virus in naïve and vaccinated pig populations by estimating the reproduction ratio (R) of infection (i.e. the number of secondary infections caused by an infectious individual) using a deterministic Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model, fitted on experimental data. One hundred and ten pigs were distributed in ten isolated rooms as follows: (i) non-vaccinated (NV), (ii) vaccinated with a heterologous vaccine (HE), and (iii) vaccinated with a homologous inactivated vaccine (HO). The study was run with multiple replicates and for each replicate, an infected non-vaccinated pig was placed with 10 contact pigs for two weeks and transmission of influenza evaluated daily by analyzing individual nasal swabs by RT-PCR. A statistically significant difference between R estimates was observed between vaccinated and non-vaccinated pigs (p < 0.05). A statistically significant reduction in transmission was observed in the vaccinated groups where R (95%CI) was 1 (0.39-2.09) and 0 for the HE and the HO groups respectively, compared to an Ro value of 10.66 (6.57-16.46) in NV pigs (p < 0.05). Transmission in the HE group was delayed and variable when compared to the NV group and transmission could not be detected in the HO group. Results from this study indicate that influenza vaccines can be used to decrease susceptibility to influenza infection and decrease influenza transmission

Improved diagnostics and surveillance identify novel reassortant swine influenza A viruses in Chile

Influenza A Virus (IAV) circulates endemically in nature, representing a constant concern to public health and animal production systems worldwide. The emergence of the 2009 H1N1 influenza A pandemic (A(H1N1)pdm09) highlighted the need of conducting systematic surveillance studies, and evidenced the significant gap of knowledge of the swine IAVs (SwIAV) circulating in pigs worldwide at the time of the outbreak. This also highlighted the role of swine as important reservoirs for the generation of endemic strains with zoonotic and pandemic potential. Despite this, comprehensive information of SwIAV circulating in Latin America is still lacking. While Chile has strong ecological barriers and high stringency controls regarding livestock trading, IAV is endemic and has been consistently detected in pigs. This has caused great concerns for the swine industry, because of the on-going clinical and production losses. Nevertheless, few surveillance efforts have been conducted in Chile and there is limited information regarding the genetic diversity and origin of swIAVs. Determining the viral subtypes and genotypes circulating in swine is key for the development of appropriate vaccine approaches and control measures for the swine industry, and it is crucial for identifying novel strains with pandemic potential. We developed improved diagnostic tools to detect endemic viruses and characterized the diversity and origin of SwAIV and its prevalence in Chilean swine production farms. From December 2013 to June 2015, we sampled 27 farms representative of intensive swine production systems located between the Valparaiso and Araucania administrative regions. Animals were mainly found to be susceptible to IAV infection at 50 to 110 days of age. Serological analysis of 718 serum samples obtained from 3 different farms showed 91-59% prevalence to SwIAV, with 18-67% positivity to A(H1N1)pdm09-like strains and 29-58% positivity to a novel SwH1N2 virus. We also obtained a total of 1016 nasal swabs (NS, 85%) and 176 oral fluids (OF, 15%) that were tested by Real-time RT-PCR (qPCR) and virus isolation. Of these, 295 samples (25%) were positive to swIAV (23% of NS and 38% of OF). A large number of farms (21 out of 27, 78%) were positive in at least one visit, and most farms showed temporal co-circulation of at least 2 viruses or mixed infections. We subtyped selected positive samples and sequenced 51 complete viral genomes using the Illumina platform. Nineteen additional hemagglutinins (HA) genes were sequenced by Sanger. We performed Bayesian Evolutionary Analyses to reconstruct the phylogenies of the viral segments. This identified the circulation of 2 predominant swIAV genotypes in Chile, the A(H1N1)pdm09-like (35%) strain and a novel SwH1N2 virus (45%). This H1N2 virus is unique to Chile since it is genetically distinct from the H1 virus clusters seen in North America and is not related to any previously reported IAV. The genome of this swH1N1 virus contains genes from 3 different human contemporary viruses. Its H1 and N2 genes are derived from human H1N1 and H3N2 viruses from the mid 90’s, respectively, suggesting that both of these human viruses were likely introduced into the Chilean swine population during that time. All the internal genes are from the A(H1N1)pdm09 strain, indicating that multiple and recent reassortment events gave rise to this novel reassortant virus. Of interest, we identified additional reassortant viruses that also contain the internal genes derived from the A(H1N1)pdm09 strain. These included an H1N1 containing the novel SwH1 and NA gene derived from the A(H1N1)pdm09-like strain, an H1N2 virus containing an H1 derived from the A(H1N1)pdm09 strain and the novel SwN2, a SwH3N2 virus and a human-like H3N2 virus, among others. Additionally, our analyses also revealed at least 3 independent human-to-swine introductions of the A(H1N1)pdm09 strain within the last 4 years in Chile. Overall this indicates that close human-swine interactions greatly contribute to the genetic diversity and emergence of IAVs in Chilean swine. This is the first comprehensive molecular epidemiological study of swIAV in Chile demonstrating the co-circulation of multiple viral strains in intensive swine production systems. Our data emphasizes the value of conducting long-term SwIAV surveillance in Latin America, a poorly studied region of the world. Acknowledgements: CEIRS program: HHSN266200700010C, HHSN272201400008C from NIH-NIAID, FONDEF IDeA Grant ID14I10201 and Proyecto Anillo de Investigación en Ciencia y Tecnología - PIA ACT1408, both from CONICYT Chile

Future teachers’ beliefs about teaching mathematics

A partir de los años ochenta del pasado siglo se empieza a dar importancia a la valoración de la dimensión afectiva en el aprendizaje y aparecen, desde entonces, multiplicidad de estudios para descubrir cuáles son estos factores emocionales y cómo influyen en el aprendizaje, hasta el punto de considerar la educación emocional como un estilo educativo docente que debe transmitir modelos emocionales adecuados. En cuanto a las matemáticas, a menudo provocan, en algunos estudiantes de los grados en educación, un cierto rechazo que hace que se sientan incapaces de afrontar con éxito tareas matemáticas. Es un círculo vicioso, las dificultades crean emociones y actitudes negativas hacia las matemáticas y estos factores afectivos generan rendimientos académicos insatisfactorios. Sin embargo, si la concepción de los maestros sobre las matemáticas es positiva, comunicarán actitudes positivas que favorecerán el proceso de aprendizaje del alumnado. En este sentido, nos interesa conocer las actitudes, creencias y emociones de estudiantes del grado en Educación Primaria respecto a las matemáticas, con el objetivo de mejorar el rendimiento en su futura práctica profesional. En concreto, centramos la atención en conocer los elementos que los estudiantes consideran como determinantes en la tarea docente y la seguridad que muestran para enseñar matemáticas De los resultados, destacamos la preocupación en las propias posibilidades para fomentar el interés de los niños para resolver problemas matemáticos desarrollando actitudes positivas, y como elemento esencial a tener en cuenta para su profesión, que el maestro de matemáticas debe ser un buen enseñante, bien formado y con diversidad de conocimientos, recursos y registros.Starting in the eighties of last century, the emotional dimension in learning began to be taken under consideration. Since then, multiple studies to discover what these emotional factors were and how they influence learning were conducted, to the point of considering the emotional education as a teaching style that should convey appropriate emotional patterns. As for mathematics, often they produce rejection in some students of the degrees in education that make them feel unable to cope with mathematical tasks successfully. It’s a vicious circle: difficulties create negative emotions and attitudes towards mathematics, and these affective factors generate an unsatisfactory academic performance. However, when the teachers’ conception about maths is positive, they convey this optimism to their pupils, which improve their learning process. In this sense, we want to know future primary teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and emotions towards mathematics, in order to improve their performance in their professional practice. Specifically, we focus on the elements that students consider as determinants in the teaching task and their self-assurance to teach maths. From the results, we’d like to highlight the concern of future schoolteachers about their own possibilities to stimulate children’s interest to solve mathematical problems by developing positive attitudes, as an essential element to take into account in their profession, and that the mathematics teacher must be a good educator, well trained and equipped with knowledge, and diversity of resources and registers.peerReviewe

Dificultades en conceptos matemáticos básicos de los estudiantes para maestro

Mathematics is important for the formation of a citizen because it constitutes a powerful instrument of analysis of the reality, of understanding of the world and of development of the critical capacity to intervene. We believe that this is the most important purpose of people’s mathematical activity, but to reach it, future teachers must have confidence in the basic mathematical knowledge on which to build further knowledge. However, in the field of mathematics education, errors constantly appear in student productions. This article discusses the errors committed by students because they provide rich and interesting information about how the mathematical knowledge is constructed. This analysis will allow us to find the common patterns that errors follow, and thus we’ll be able to make inferences about the mental processes and the structures that help to organize knowledge. It is precisely the regularity in which certain errors appear that allows us to develop classifications of these errors. Also, we must take into consideration that the categories are not hermetic compartments and often overlap with each other, as errors rarely occur due to a single cause. For this reason, to try to better understand the causes, errors are categorized according to different criteria.Las matemáticas son importantes para la formación de un ciudadano porque constituyen un poderoso instrumento de análisis de la realidad, de comprensión del mundo y de desarrollo de la capacidad de crítica para intervenir.Creemos que ésta es la finalidad más importante de la actividad matemática de las personas, pero para poder alcanzarla, los futuros maestros deben tener seguridad en el conocimiento matemático básico sobre el que se pueden construir nuevos conocimientos.No obstante, en el ámbito de la educación matemática, los errores aparecen permanentemente en las producciones de los alumnos.En este artículo se estudian los errores cometidos por los alumnos, ya que proporcionan  una información rica e interesante sobre cómo se construye el conocimiento matemático. Este análisis nos permitirá encontrar los patrones comunes a que obedecen los errores y, así, poder hacer inferencias sobre los procesos mentales y sobre las estructuras en las que se van organizando los conocimientos.Es precisamente la regularidad con que aparecen ciertos errores lo que nos permite elaborar clasificaciones de los mismos, teniendo en cuenta que las categorías no son compartimentos estancos y se suelen solapar unas con las otras, ya que rara vez un error obedece a una única causa. Por este motivo, para intentar interpretar mejor sus causas, se categorizarán los errores a partir de diferentes criterios. 

Afectos y cognición de los futuros maestros en la resolución de problemas matemáticos

The educational system has devoted much effort to the development of the rational mind and the logical and reflexive knowledge, and has neglected the emotional dimension due to its failure in realizing that the influences of cognitive and emotional nature are interrelated. The emergence of attitudes, beliefs and emotions towards mathematics is long-lasting and strongly rooted. Future teachers of primary education also have their own views and, unless they are appropriately modified, later on they can influence in their pupils’ achievement in the mathematical field. Therefore, the analysis of these emotional factors could enlighten the design of strategic actions in the Teacher’s Training Degree that would result in the improvement of the teaching practice. In this quantitative and qualitative study, we analyse the affective factors that influence future schoolteachers, when faced with solving mathematical problems. Results indicate significant cognitive difficulties to promote essential heuristic processes for the inquiry and the search for solutions to problems that, in turn, may challenge the students’ perception regarding their beliefs about their own safety, confidence, satisfaction, curiosity, ability and resources when solving problems.El sistema educativo ha dedicado muchos esfuerzos al desarrollo de la mente racional y del conocimiento lógico y reflexivo, sin dar importancia a la dimensión afectiva al considerarse que las influencias de naturaleza cognitiva y emocional no se presentan interrelacionadas.La aparición de actitudes, creencias y emociones hacia las matemáticas perdura en el tiempo y arraiga fuertemente. Los estudiantes del grado en Educación Primaria también las muestran y las padecen cuando dichas actitudes, creencias y emociones son desajustadas,  por lo que, si no las modifican, pueden influir en los logros de sus futuros alumnos en el ámbito matemático. Así pues, el análisis de estos factores emocionales nos permitirá diseñar estrategias de actuación que redunden en la mejora del rendimiento en la práctica profesional docente.En este estudio, de carácter cuantitativo y cualitativo, valoramos los factores afectivos de los futuros maestros de educación primaria, cuando se enfrentan a la resolución de problemas matemáticos.Los resultados indican dificultades cognitivas a la hora de favorecer procesos heurísticos esenciales para la indagación y la búsqueda de soluciones a los problemas que, a su vez, pueden contradecir la percepción de los estudiantes en cuanto a las creencias sobre la propia seguridad, confianza, satisfacción, curiosidad, capacidad y recursos cuando resuelven problemas.

La construcción de la paz mediante la educación. Hacia el diseño de un instrumento de indicadores

La investigación tiene como propósito diseñar y validar un instrumentoque permita valorar cómo se construye la paz mediante la educación. Se parte de una fundamentación conceptual, seguida por una valoración de expertos y la realización de un estudio piloto basado en el análisis de materiales curriculares y en la obtención de datos mediante visitas a escuelas. Como resultado, se proporciona un instrumento— Indicadores de Construcción de Cultura de Paz a través de la Educación (ICCPE) — formado por cuatro principios y ocho estándares (marco referencial) que se especifican en 39 indicadores y 156 descriptores (marco instrumental). El ICCPE permite concretar los parámetros de la cultura de paz en el ámbito educativo, haciéndolos comprensibles en su dimensión práctica y, por lo tanto, contribuyendo a hacerlos visibles para los docentes

Individual or Common Good? Voluntary Data Sharing to Inform Disease Surveillance Systems in Food Animals

Livestock producers have traditionally been reluctant to share information related to their business, including data on health status of their animals, which, sometimes, has impaired the ability to implement surveillance programs. However, during the last decade, swine producers in the United States (US) and other countries have voluntarily begun to share data for the control and elimination of specific infectious diseases, such as the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSv). Those surveillance programs have played a pivotal role in bringing producers and veterinarians together for the benefit of the industry. Examples of situations in which producers have decided to voluntarily share data for extended periods of time to support applied research and, ultimately, disease control in the absence of a regulatory framework have rarely been documented in the peer-reviewed literature. Here, we provide evidence of a national program for voluntary sharing of disease status data that has helped the implementation of surveillance activities that, ultimately, allowed the generation of critically important scientific information to better support disease control activities. Altogether, this effort has supported, and is supporting, the design and implementation of prevention and control approaches for the most economically devastating swine disease affecting the US. The program, which has been voluntarily sustained and supported over an extended period of time by the swine industry in the absence of any regulatory framework and that includes data on approximately 50% of the sow population in the US, represents a unique example of a livestock industry self-organized surveillance program to generate scientific-driven solutions for emerging swine health issues in North America

El rol de la escuela en la formación democrática : diseño de un cuestionario

El papel de los centros educativos en la formación democrática es fundamental para construir sociedades más equitativas e inclusivas. La literatura destaca la falta de instrumentos de evaluación de estrategias de apoyo en este ámbito con propiedades psicométricas adecuadas. El objetivo del trabajo fue construir el cuestionario 'Convivencia y participación democrática en los centros educativos' a partir de la validación por jueces y análisis de fiabilidad mediante un estudio piloto. Respecto a los jueces, participaron 16 expertos en la temática y aspectos metodológicos y en cuanto al pilotaje, se contó con 136 directores de escuela. Se analizó la validez de contenido y fiabilidad del instrumento y los resultados indican una validez de contenido adecuada, con un nivel de correlación entre .6 y .7 en la mayoría de los ítems y una fiabilidad aceptable, con una alfa de Cronbach de .876 para la dimensión de Convivencia y un valor de alfa de Cronbach .886 para la dimensión de Participación. A partir de las valoraciones de los jueces y la prueba piloto, se puso de manifiesto la necesidad de revisar el comportamiento de algunos ítems en función de las correlaciones de cada uno con su subescala. The role of schools in democratic education is essential to build more equitable and inclusive societies. The literature highlights the lack of instruments for evaluating support strategies in this field with adequate psychometric properties. The aim of this work was to create the questionnaire "Coexistence and democratic participation in schools" based on validation by expert judges and reliability analysis through a pilot study. Sixteen experts in the subject and methodological aspects participated as judges, and 136 school principals participated in the pilot study. A content validity analysis and a reliability study of the instrument were carried out. The results indicate an adequate content validity and an acceptable reliability, with a correlation level between .6 and .7 for most of the items and acceptable reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha value of .876 for the Coexistence dimension, and a Cronbach's alpha value of .886 for the Participation dimension. From the judges' evaluations and the pilot test, it became clear that the behavior of some items needed to be revised based on the correlations of each item with its subscale